photos looking 'bleached'

<p>Hi all<br>

still getting used to my new camera (eos 450d with 17-85 lens)</p>

<p>looking for some pointers as to why a lot of my photos have a 'bleached' look to them-i have included an example here--it was taken at shutter speed 1/15, aperture 22---the ground and sky just seem far too bright, and non-descript-the same picture at 1/25 and aperture 10 looked almost the same--it was a bright day with hazy sunshine--the metering mode is on evaluative metering and think the iso is on auto--any ideas how to improve my photos--my canon ixus point and shoot takes much better photos!-what am i doing wrong??</p>

<p>cheers in advance</p><div></div>

<p>Do you shoot with the Canon ixus at 1/15 shutter speed and f22 too? How about setting iso to 100 and dial up the fstop to say f11. Put the camera in AV mode and let it decide what shutter speed to use? Or just set the camera to P mode (automatic) until you re-establish heading with the new camrea. At f22 (defraction) and low shutter speed (motion blur) can really mess thing up.</p>

<p>Also check and set if you accidentally set the metering mode to spot meter mode. If so, switch it back to matrix metering. Looks like the camera is metering off the dark shadow spot in the middle.</p>

<p>I don't think you're doing anything wrong at all, at least in terms of camera settings. The photo is overexposed, probably because of the massive difference in lighting between the dark areas and the bright areas. The camera has attempted to make the best of it and failed because with lighting like that you're going to either have washed out bright areas or jet black shadows. It's a matter of either choosing which one to lose, putting some light into the dark area to even the light levels out, or doing multiple exposures for HDR.</p>

<p>I looked the picture's EXIF info. You were in AV mode and not in spot meter mode. Looks like it is the dark spot in the center of frame that fooled the meter. Unless there are writing on the dark back wall that you want to capture, I would try set the f-stop to f11 but meter off the front hay stack (using exposure lock button).</p>

<p>Just thinking about this a little more, I have a couple of ideas that will help. The 'bleached' look as you put it is due to overexposure causing the highlights to clip. Turn your histogram on and check it after shooting, and if the graph runs hard up against the right hand side, then your highlights are getting clipped. Dial in some minus exposure compensation and re-shoot and see if it looks any better. Let me know if any of this is unclear, I'm happy to explain in more detail.</p>

<p>Overexposure seems to be the problem as discussed and if many of your pictures have came out this way then you should figure out why (duh, thus the posting) - if you shoot outdoors in direct sunlight or high contrast scenes as the one you posted is - you will find that the various "auto modes" that your camera has will misduge the proper camera settings at times and give either over or underexposed images...</p>

<p>It seems curious that you mainly get overexposed images as of late. Are your familiar with using exposure compensation? If not, then perhaps you have exposure compensation at a higher amount than zero and do not know it? If this is the case, this tells your camera to overexpose all of your images takin in various camera modes. Just a thought, you may already know that?<br>

If you do not know how to use your histogram generally, then learn that. I am a beginner and it really helps alot. Also, if you do not have a gray card, get one and learn to use your meter in such scenes (and other ones for that matter) and use manual mode and learn to manipulate your camera's settings to get consistent good exposures. Dont let the camera choose arbitrarily - I think you should always be very mindful about what settings the camera chooses as a beginner or the auto modes will simply hinder your learning.</p>

<p>but do make sure you do not have exp. compensation up unknowingly :)</p>

<p>I'd guess your point & shoot wouldn't have done much better in that exact same situation. The SLR doesn't necessarily get everything right on automatic--what your SLR gives you is easy access to the tools to handle tricky metering situations.</p>

<p>Camera settings may not be ideal (Av, f/22, ISO 800, no exposure comp) but this is not really the problem. The problem is that your meter was fooled by a dark "subject" in the center with severe backlighting. The camera's evaluative/matrix/segmented metering "thinks" you want the center exposed "correctly" and is allowing the surrounding regions to overexpose. </p>

<p>You need to recognize this when shooting; it will come with some experience but you can re-shoot with negative exposure compensation after reviewing the image and seeing the histogram crowded to the right, or the blinking clipping warnings on the review image. In addition to using exposure compensation, you can point the camera to a more neutral area and lock exposure (I believe this is the '*' button on a Canon?), then re-compose and shoot.</p>

<p>Consider checking out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-Photographs-Digital-Updated/dp/0817463003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247525201&sr=8-1">"Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson</a> .</p>

<p>cheers for the responses folks<br>

can i start by saying i'm a real novice at this so some of thr replies went a wee bit over my head!---i tend to mostly have my camera on AV mode and so alter the aperture depending on how much information i want in focus--and letting the camera set the shutter speed for me--having said that, i suppose an aperture setting of 22 was far too high for this photo ---should have set it to half that should i???????--IS AN APERTURE of 22 only really necesssary for landscape shots/infinity? )<br>

to answer a few of the questions;<br>

Tommy Lee--my canon ixus is set to fully automatic so its just a matter of pointing and shooting with it. The metereing on my eos is always set to evaluative. I didn't take the same picture in fully automatic mode.<br>

Chris: i looked at the histogram--there is a small peak to the left of the graph, flattish in the middle, and a very high peak at the far right--by 'dialing in some minus exposure' do you mean setting the aperture to -1??--shame i'm a few hundred miles a way from the picture site, but suppose can try it out on another site!<br>

Ellery--no my pictures are always set in the middle of the exposure compensation--'0'--haven't advanced to use it yet, but having said that maybe i should--trouble is that when i viewed the pic on the camera after taking it, it looked 'ok'---only when i got it onto the laptop did it look 'bleached'. Maybe i should try taking a picture either side of the '0' mark in future??? No don't have a gray card-must read up on that one!--yea maybe should set the camera to M in future, might force me to learn the camera better!<br>

Andrew: -by the 'blinking clipping warning' do u mean the parts that 'blink black' on review mode--cos when reviewing this pic on the camera the sky and foreground all flash black-does this mean that those areas are over exposed and so its necessary to adjust the compensation (negatively in this case) or try use exposure lock on say the hay stacks as Tommy Lee recommended?</p>

<p>appreciate the advice folks</p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p> </p>

<p><strong>"i suppose an aperture setting of 22 was far too high for this photo ---should have set it to half that should i???????--"</strong><br>

- if you were to take the same photograph in Av priority again and point it in the same spot as you did the first time, you will consistently get a similar result because whatever Fstop you choose, the camera chooses a corresponding shutter speed to give that same blown out exposure....</p>

<p>Improper choice of aperature was not your problem - understand that by increasing your F stop from say F11 to F22 LIMITS light and expands depth of field - and to get a proper exposure, a corresponding longer shutter speed will need to be chosen - the problem for you was that your camera chose the shutter speed improperly (a bit too long) due to improper metering - you will find that in almost every scene that is highly contrasty, evaluative metering will not do. As you shoot more and learn more, you will indefinately find such limitations of using your SLR in various auto modes. </p>

<p>Note this point - there just a few things that in harmony control what exposure you get - 1) shutter speed, 2)aperature, 3)ISO. If your image is too bright, then the only way to make it better is to change one of these three - these are changed either directly in one of the camera modes - they can also be changed by dialing up or down exposure compensation - note that changing exposure compensation is just another way of telling your camera to change aperature and/or shutter speed - I do not suggest using this feature at this point - just leave it at zero and change the settings yourself to get a better understanding of the basics. </p>

<p>The next questions you need to have answered fully are: "how do I use my camera's TTL meter in order to use full manual mode" and "what's the difference in metering modes?" and "which metering mode do I use". If you anwer these questions, you'll be in the right track!</p>